


Year of the Dragon

by PrinceDarcy



Category: Death Note, Death Note & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Kira worshipers, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:10:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4054471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDarcy/pseuds/PrinceDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years since Light Yagami's death and Kira's disappearance.</p><p>An old friend pays respects to his memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Year of the Dragon

They'd built a damn church in Kira's honor.

The building was small and not terribly conspicuous, and even the name was respectably vague; “Savior Church” could be the name of any nondescript Christian institution, but to anyone who hadn't spent the last seven years under a rock, the winged heart carved into the wood above the door was an indistinguishable mark of which so-called savior it was honoring. The inside painted that picture in big bold strokes, too—the sculptures, the paintings, the stained glass, all featuring skull-headed figures in place of the usual characters. No Christ or Virgin Mary here. Just Kira, Kira with the winged heart behind his skeletal face in place of a halo, Kira holding an apple in one hand and a burning heart in the other.

Yamamoto stood in the very back, by the door, gun and badge in his pocket just in case someone questioned his motives for being there—as if anyone would, but he practiced his excuses, anyway, that he was a detective on L's personal task force, that he was monitoring Kira's remaining supporters to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior or any indication that someone else might be coming into Kira's power. No one even glanced at him, so he stood and watched mass.

The worshipers all wore black, faces hidden by cloaks and veils, black candles held in their hands. They sang no hymns, they barely moved. Yamamoto could hear a young girl at the very back quietly weeping. To still worship Kira was to live in mourning, and he couldn't help but pity them, a bit.

“Our Lord Kira was delivered unto Heaven, in body and in soul, and someday He will return to us, our God, and cleanse the world once more,” the veiled woman at the pulpit said, and that was when Yamamoto turned and left.

Kira's body was not in Heaven. Light Yagami's ashes were buried a half-hour's drive away, and they had been there for exactly two years.

Originally, the graveyard had been Yamamoto's only intended destination for the day, but it didn't feel right not to pay a visit to the tangible memorial, the one that the public could recognize. Compartmentalizing his memories didn't work all that well, no matter how much easier it would be if it did. Light _was_ Kira. He couldn't remember one and not the other.

Light's grave was plain, respectable, inconspicuous. Like the outside of the church. A cross with a plaque beneath it, perfectly matching the one directly to its left. Light's bore his name. The one next to it bore an inscription, in both English and Japanese.

_闇の中に光を探しました。_

_In darkness, he was searching for light._

Yamamoto was not one of the select few to know who lay beneath the nameless cross, though he could clearly see that the two graves indicated some link, like they were a pair, a set—perhaps he could have guessed, in time, but for the moment, he simply spared the inscription a glance and a humorless laugh. _Well, you found him._ A moment of some attempt at brevity before he turned to face the grave he was there to visit.

Light Yagami. February 28th, 1986 – January 28th, 2010.

Yamamoto had gone to his funeral, along with all of Light's friends from high school and university. He hadn't been able to wrap his head around the idea that Light was dead, then, a month before he would have turned twenty-five. He'd been like a robot all throughout the proceedings, blank-eyed and lost in his stupor, trying to remember—when was the last time they'd even spoken? What was the last thing he'd said to someone who he'd used to consider a close friend? The lie Light's friends and family had been fed was that he'd been killed by Kira, but that Kira had been captured thanks to his sacrifice. Kira, Kira, Kira. Kira had been one of the last things Yamamoto had talked to Light about. He'd supported Kira, back then. As a bright-eyed teenager, he'd seen this figure claiming to be a god of justice and he'd soaked it right up and then Kira had murdered his friend.

When he joined L's task force and they told him the truth, it took him a long time to realize that “Kira killed Light” was far from a lie in the first place.

He wished he'd been able to see it back then, somehow. There was a lot he hadn't been able to see until it was too late. He hadn't been the most clever of teenagers. Idealistic, naive, hardly interested in much more than girls and gaming when it came down to it.

He'd never been anything like Light. He'd always expected Light would be something great. Light would be amazing, important. Yamamoto might achieve his half-serious goal of being a policeman someday, if he tried. They'd mostly parted ways once they went to university, even though they were in the same school and even shared some classes. Light had been the top of his year, along with some other guy, a wild-looking young man calling himself Hideki Ryuga, and the two were practically inseparable on campus. Yamamoto, meanwhile, had found other friends, too. When had he and Light last seen each other? They'd gone to Aoyama together in the spring, back then, and they'd crossed paths a handful of times since...

Before that, though. He could still remember what it was like before that. When they were friends, when they walked home from school together with Tanaka practically every day. Back when they were just carefree high school students, and they could laugh about their teachers and their families and even about Kira. Back then, even if someone had told him what Light had been hiding, Yamamoto wouldn't have believed it. Light had everything—he was the top of his class, his family had money, he had tons of friends and practically every girl in school would have gone out with him if he so much as said a word. He had the perfect life.

No... but it wasn't like everything had seemed completely perfect, even then. Before Kira, Light had been seeming different, a little... less motivated, in a way. He'd quit tennis at the end of junior high, even though he loved it, and in high school it seemed like studying was really all he cared about... not that anyone would think that was weird for such a serious student, and at the time it seemed just fine. But really, it was when Kira appeared that Light had gotten back to his old self, and that was chilling to realize now. Who would have guessed something like that? If anything, Yamamoto probably would have said back then that he'd think becoming Kira would make someone more depressed, not less. But Light was never exactly a normal guy.

And that was part of the problem too, though Yamamoto didn't like to think about that. It wouldn't be fair to tell himself that the only reason they'd drifted apart was because Light was so much better than him. He'd pulled back, too, and he'd been kicking himself for it long enough even without voicing it.

It wasn't like he could have changed his feelings even if he tried, but he still felt like he could have done something _better_.

Light could have dated any girl he wanted, but he never treated it like anything more than an obligation, and yet—right up until late in their last year of high school, he'd cancel plans to go to the arcade or wherever with Yamamoto. He'd even skipped _prep class_ once, but the smile on his face had wavered when Yamamoto had mentioned wanting to ask out the girl who worked at the counter. Just a twitch of something sad before he was right back to normal. Yeah, he'd noticed that then. He'd noticed when Light would call him and ask him to go somewhere on Christmas, how Yamamoto would always _remind_ him that it was a day they should be spending with girlfriends, not each other. He'd noticed that he'd have to work Tanaka into their plans himself. He'd noticed all of that, and he'd willfully ignored it. He'd pretended that it didn't mean anything, that none of it meant anything because that would be _weird_ and Light couldn't be like that. They were just friends and if anything, Light was just joking when he'd say something that suggested otherwise, so it was fine if Yamamoto jokingly shut him down.

One of the last conversations they'd had that Yamamoto could remember clearly was like that. Light saying, with a touch of disappointment, that it wasn't too late to send him a New Year's card. (Light had sent Yamamoto one, a hand-written one very much unlike the store-bought ones he sent out to all the girls who liked him.)

_Sorry, Light, I only send those to girls._

Yamamoto cleared his throat and took an envelope out of his coat.

“Hey, Light,” he said to empty air, as if his former friend was standing in front of him right then. As if this wasn't a graveyard. As if they were just a couple high school students again.

As if Light had never been Kira.

“I know this is way too late, but I had a lot going on this year and if I was only going to be able to make it out here one time... it felt like it should be today.”

 _Well, that's just like Yamamoto,_ Light would have said, laughing. _You're late for everything._

“I didn't do this last year, since—when this sort of things happen, you're not supposed to give these to the family that year, out of respect. But even though it's not New Year's anymore, even though... I really should have done this before all this, do you think you could accept this?”

Yamamoto gingerly placed the envelope on the plaque beneath the cross, staring at it for a moment as though worried it would burst into flames or something. As if Light's spirit would try and spite him now.

He'd bought an expensive New Year's card from the store with a beautiful drawing of a dragon on the front of it, to commemorate the year. He'd hand-written a long message inside—nothing remarkable. Something like what he would have written to Light all those years ago. Something normal.

Kira or no, it felt like Light deserved that much.

As Yamamoto turned his back on the grave, the envelope shifted slightly.

It must have just been the wind, even though the graveyard was still that day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> When I say "L", I'm referring to Near, as we know he's going by the alias of L in the one-shot.


End file.
